The speed at which this is happening is baffling to me. I can’t say I’m terribly bothered by it. (Although in my experience there are more than a few people who are being honest when they say “heritage, not hate”–I think they’re naive, but I believe that they’re genuinely not racists.) But it’s hard to believe that a single Confederate flag flying over a war memorial near the South Carolina State House (not at the State House itself, as was widely reported, and the flag in question had no pulley and wasn’t designed to be run up and down) would be the thing to set off a near-instant nationwide business backlash, when decades of protests and vitriol weren’t enough.

I’m not defending the silly thing, and you don’t need to remind me about the people who were killed or the politics of the scumbag who did it. It’s just…weird that it’s happening this way.

I think it’s about time. The cultural discourse has been ripening on the vine for the last couple of years as more and more footage of cops slaughtering unarmed black people have been going viral. Eventually the scale’s gotta tip in the other direction.